TEL AVIV -- Yigal Amir, a smiling assassin whose bullets temporarily advanced the peace process he sought to destroy, was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.Amir remained unrepentant and uncowed. He told the court, "I did it for the people of Israel, the Torah of Israel, the land of Israel."A three-judge panel rejected Amir's explanation that he was pTC compelled by biblical law to shoot Mr. Rabin to stop the government from returning land to Palestinians.

It looks like Baltimore "can dance. " Owings Mills native and Baltimore School for the Arts alumna Amir Sanders made it through the first round of auditions in Philadelphia on "So You Think You Can Dance. " Sanders will appear on next week's episode, 8 p.m. June 25. How old were you when you began dancing? I was about 3-years-old when I started dancing. My mom thought I was clumsy so she put me in dance lessons. Where have you danced? When I was in the 8th grade, I started going to Deer Park Middle Magnet School and I danced during my 6th period class every day. I've also attended the American Ballet Theatre in Alabama, The Rock School in Pennsylvania, the Atlanta Ballet and I just finished the Dance Theatre of Harlem. What's your favorite dance style?

A 22-year-old London man who says his photo from a stock image catalog was used in a hoax about a killing for Air Jordans wants Americans to know: "I'm actually alive. " As shoppers around the country clashed over the sneakers, reports circulated social media and blogs that an 18-year-old Washington DC teenager named Tyreek Amir Jacobs had been killed in one of the melees . In fact, police reported no such killings, and the image of "Jacobs" was from a stock catalog. In London, Sidney Boahen says he was getting home from his job as a pharmacist trainee and saw in his Facebook inbox that a friend had seen the report.

On the Web: * CollegeHumor.com, a popular comedy Web site devoted to the (cough) collegiate mind, has done it again. A series of viral videos on the site features a prank war between site front page editor Streeter Seidell and senior writer Amir Blumenfeld. In the last installment (in 2007), prankster Amir gave Streeter Yankee tickets for him and his girlfriend. Amir arranged it so the JumboTron had Streeter unknowingly proposing to his girlfriend (which subsequently added to the end of their relationship)

Israel Amir, 99, the first commander of the Israeli air force, died in a Tel Aviv hospital Friday, the military said. Mr. Amir was born Israel Zblodovsky in Russia in 1903, and in 1923 he immigrated to what was then British-ruled Palestine. He soon joined the Hagana underground, the forerunner of the Israeli army. In 1942, after holding a number of field commands, Mr. Amir was made head of the Hagana's information department, which evolved into the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies.

The Tofighbakhsh brothers -- Rahim, Hamid and Amir -- are a package deal.They live together. They went to college together. And when they applied to dental school four years ago, they told admissions officials they had to accept all -- or none.Now, the three brothers, who graduated from the University of Maryland at Baltimore dental school yesterday, want to open a practice together."It's nice. We're just very close," says Rahim, the most talkative of the three.Rahim and Hamid are 26-year-old twins.

CHRIS Tompkins, Marty Milan and Amir Jones. Pseudonyms for three middle-class, high-achieving black students who arrived at Talbert State University (also a pseudonym) a few years ago dreaming of careers in science. Chris wanted to be an engineer. Marty was interested in psychiatry. Amir aspired to pharmacy. But by the time they graduated, only Amir had persisted. Bradford F. Lewis, now a professor at Morgan State University, set out to find out why only one of the three stayed on track.

JERUSALEM -- For the moment, at least, the shock of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination has produced signs of a kinder, gentler place.Yasser Arafat slipped into Tel Aviv Thursday night on a condolence call to the slain prime minister's widow, and there was no uproar about the Palestinian leader's first visit to Israel.Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli opposition leader who regularly branded Mr. Arafat a "terrorist," obligingly said that the Palestinian's visit was "understandable."Twenty-five Jewish settlers from the most right-wing settlements staged a sit-in yesterday joining Palestinians protesting land confiscations by the Israelis.

By John R. Alden and By John R. Alden,Special to the Sun | August 12, 2001

The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World, by Amir D. Aczel. Harcourt. 178 pages. $23. If books were classified like birds or butterflies, The Riddle of the Compass would go into the family of literary nonfiction. This genre deals with topics that might be treated in academic history, science or biography, but without the formalistic jargon, massed detail and elaborate footnoting of scholarly writing. Literary nonfiction, in short, aims to tell true stories in a brisk, entertaining and commercially successful way. Books of this sort are easily identified.

Update: The man who says his photo was used as part of the hoax lives in London, and has given an interview to The Baltimore Sun. The disbelief over unruly crowds fighting and being pepper sprayed over Air Jordan Concords turned to mourning when it was reported on social media and blogs that a young man, 18-year-old Tyreek Amir Jacobs, had been killed for the coveted shoes. As the rumors put it, Jacobs was a teen from Washington DC and killed in Maryland, possibly at the Wheaton Mall.

On the Web: * CollegeHumor.com, a popular comedy Web site devoted to the (cough) collegiate mind, has done it again. A series of viral videos on the site features a prank war between site front page editor Streeter Seidell and senior writer Amir Blumenfeld. In the last installment (in 2007), prankster Amir gave Streeter Yankee tickets for him and his girlfriend. Amir arranged it so the JumboTron had Streeter unknowingly proposing to his girlfriend (which subsequently added to the end of their relationship)

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Several hundred Iraqi police recruits were being treated yesterday in an outbreak of severe food poisoning that triggered a mutinous episode in southern Iraq, and the capital was shaken by the assassination of the vice president's brother. Officials in Numaniyah, about 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, said disorder broke out at a military base yesterday, the day after the recruits became ill. Angry recruits stoned the car of their commander. Authorities said they had not yet established that the food poisoning, which broke out Sunday evening, was intentional.

CHRIS Tompkins, Marty Milan and Amir Jones. Pseudonyms for three middle-class, high-achieving black students who arrived at Talbert State University (also a pseudonym) a few years ago dreaming of careers in science. Chris wanted to be an engineer. Marty was interested in psychiatry. Amir aspired to pharmacy. But by the time they graduated, only Amir had persisted. Bradford F. Lewis, now a professor at Morgan State University, set out to find out why only one of the three stayed on track.

Israel Amir, 99, the first commander of the Israeli air force, died in a Tel Aviv hospital Friday, the military said. Mr. Amir was born Israel Zblodovsky in Russia in 1903, and in 1923 he immigrated to what was then British-ruled Palestine. He soon joined the Hagana underground, the forerunner of the Israeli army. In 1942, after holding a number of field commands, Mr. Amir was made head of the Hagana's information department, which evolved into the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Several hundred Iraqi police recruits were being treated yesterday in an outbreak of severe food poisoning that triggered a mutinous episode in southern Iraq, and the capital was shaken by the assassination of the vice president's brother. Officials in Numaniyah, about 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, said disorder broke out at a military base yesterday, the day after the recruits became ill. Angry recruits stoned the car of their commander. Authorities said they had not yet established that the food poisoning, which broke out Sunday evening, was intentional.

By Will Englund and Will Englund,SUN FOREIGN STAFF | November 22, 2001

KHURVORI, Afghanistan - Amir Mohammed and his men sprawled on the scattered straw, soaking up yesterday's cool, hazy sunshine. Life at the forward post of the Northern Alliance had become easy since the fighting stopped nine days before. A steady trickle of refugees came by, from the Taliban lines just a mile or so away to the west. A little girl rode in a sack on the side of a donkey, but none of Mohammed's men paid her any mind. A Northern Alliance tank on a bare tan mountain on the southern rim of the valley had been firing intermittently, a boom and fizz, and then a distant puff of smoke and dust, but sometime after noon even the tank fell silent.

By Will Englund and Will Englund,SUN FOREIGN STAFF | November 22, 2001

KHURVORI, Afghanistan - Amir Mohammed and his men sprawled on the scattered straw, soaking up yesterday's cool, hazy sunshine. Life at the forward post of the Northern Alliance had become easy since the fighting stopped nine days before. A steady trickle of refugees came by, from the Taliban lines just a mile or so away to the west. A little girl rode in a sack on the side of a donkey, but none of Mohammed's men paid her any mind. A Northern Alliance tank on a bare tan mountain on the southern rim of the valley had been firing intermittently, a boom and fizz, and then a distant puff of smoke and dust, but sometime after noon even the tank fell silent.

By John R. Alden and By John R. Alden,Special to the Sun | August 12, 2001

The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World, by Amir D. Aczel. Harcourt. 178 pages. $23. If books were classified like birds or butterflies, The Riddle of the Compass would go into the family of literary nonfiction. This genre deals with topics that might be treated in academic history, science or biography, but without the formalistic jargon, massed detail and elaborate footnoting of scholarly writing. Literary nonfiction, in short, aims to tell true stories in a brisk, entertaining and commercially successful way. Books of this sort are easily identified.